Spoilers: Episode three
Shipper: Claire/Charlie
Summary: Claire, Charlie, and an ocean.
A/N: I did not just write fluff. No way. Not even the amazingly cute shipper of Charlie/Claire can push me into writing a piece of fluff fic. Nope... okay, maybe just a little bit. Damn it.
The only sound is the water lapping at their bare toes and a gentle breeze pass behind them. No honking cars. No laughing. No yelling. No hum of electronics.
Claire glances up to find Charlie smiling. She pushes her sun brunt checks up to return the gesture.
"Hot, isn't it?" she asks because she there really is nothing else to say.
Charlie tilts his head all the way back, as if blinding himself by looking up at the sun would help answer her question.
"Yep. Care for a dip then?"
He's squinting and smiling at her and Claire asks herself for the fifth time that day why he is wasting his time with the pregnant lady.
"Our clothes will get wet!"
Charlie grins, wiggles his eyebrows, and splashes deeper into the ocean. There are limbs and water flying everywhere; he has her giggling like they don't have a care in the world. Like it is normal for there not to be cars or laughing or yelling or technology.
"Come on then! The water's cool."
His shirt is clinging at odd angles to his body and his hair seems to have gone on strike against parts of his head. Claire remembers her brother once looking like that after she pushed him into the pool, but Charlie's smiling at her in a different way and it really is too hot to just stand out in the sun.
Keeping one hand protectively around her stomach, she takes slow shaky steps towards Charlie's radiant smile.
"Feels better, doesn't it?" he whispers.
Claire thinks that her own bed and lots of air conditions would feel the best. But this has Charlie and water cooling her sun burnt skin so she nods. A gentle tide pushes Charlie a fraction of an inch closer to her. She thinks this could be paradise under different circumstances.
There is a sudden flare of pain that she almost passes off as hunger before she realizes the baby is kicking. She drops her hand around the spot and imagines a tiny baby foot pressing against her palm, with just a thin wall between them.
Charlie's taking an uneasy step forward, paddling through the light waves, and reaches a half polished hand towards her. His hand rests next to hers and the first thought she has is it that his hands are a lot smaller than she would have imagined.
"Do you feel that? Do you feel it kicking?"
Charlie nods with a dazed smile, eyes not leaving the area where their hands lay side by side. She can't remember him ever being this focused on one thing before.
The tide pushes them closer by half step. Suddenly she has goose bumps despite the sun beating down directly on her scalp.
"That's amazing," Charlie whispers.
Claire tilts her head up to meet his eyes. The kicking subsides and their hands meet. Neither moves as the ocean whirls around them.
Claire thinks that maybe, just maybe, she could get used to this whole deserted island thing. As long as it remains not entirely deserted.